Posts Tagged ‘BLOOMBERG’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 1, 2024 at 12:09 am
After taking office as President on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump continued to hurl threats of violence against those he hates.
“Trump’s language of violence started with immigrants when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015,” wrote Washington Post Reporter Eugene Scott. “There is a direct line from his language to real violence against immigrants and other innocent Americans caught in the maniacal mass shootings of the past year.
“And this cancer is spreading: to Congress, to the media, to the intelligence community, to foreign allies. There is no end in sight as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged and the GOP remains frozen in abject silence.”
On October 2, 2019, Journalist Nina Burleigh wrote: “Since 2015, TV-watching Americans have been subject to the deimatic spectacle of more than 400 rallies (at least 80 since his election) in which Trump sometimes openly and more often coyly urged supporters to violence. These spectacles have conditioned many Americans to fear him and his more enthusiastic supporters.”
Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump
“Over the last few days, the President’s rhetoric of violence and hate has spread,” stated an October 3, 2019 press release by America’s Voice, a liberal immigration group.
“As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, ‘Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of ‘treason,’ promised ‘Big Consequences’ for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment ‘will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.’”
Trump’s opponents have good reason to fear. And not simply the public demonstrations by the President’s fanatical base. They should fear the secret fantasies of the Right.
Those secret fantasies have been revealed in a series of Right-wing videos featuring graphic acts of violence against those whom the Right—and Trump—hate.
From October 10 to 12, 2019, attendees of the American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort enjoyed many of those videos.
One of these, “The Trumpsman,” featured a digitized Trump shooting, stabbing and setting fire to such liberals—and even conservatives—as:
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former Vice President Joe Biden
- Former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
- Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
- Former President Barack Obama
- Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders
- Utah Senator Mitt Romney
- The late Arizona Senator John McCain
And legitimate news media—such as CBS, BBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were also depicted as among Trump’s victims.
The video was produced by Rightists who believed it reflected what Donald Trump would do to his enemies if only he could get away with it. And given his near-constant calls for violence against his critics, they were absolutely correct.
But the video’s critics were wrong to call for its suppression.
On the contrary—it should have bene widely seen for what it was: The Mein Kampf of Donald Trump and his fanatical followers, in and outside the Republican party.
Like Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, it depicted the future America can expect if the Right gains the power to live out its murderous fantasies. And the fantasy Right-wingers prize most: The brutal extermination of everyone who refuses to submit to their Fascistic tyranny.
“The Trumpsman” is part of a growing genre of pro-Trump memes that routinely earn thousands of views on sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many superimpose the faces of Trump and his chief supporters slaughtering Democrats, liberal celebrities and/or members of the media.
The event’s organizer, Alex Phillips, hurriedly claimed that the “unauthorized video” was shown “in a side room” at the American Priority Conference.
But there was an upside to this exercise in Right-wing porn. Democrats could have run TV ads showing limited clips from “The Trumpsman” video.
Unfortunately, the majority of Democrats lack the courage to attack their Right-wing enemies with the same ruthlessness used against them. That’s why they lost most Presidential elections of the 20th century.
Americans should be constantly warned: These videos were not made by liberals to parody the values and goals of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
These videos were made by Right-wingers—and reflect the true values and intentions of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
The boiler-plate rhetoric that gushes out of Republican conventions—about love of family, God and flag—is the public mask of the Right.
The videos that depict Right-wingers ruthlessly slaughtering anyone who dares to disagree with them reflect the real face of the Right.
Of course, most Americans never imagined that a President would:
- Refuse to accept the results of a legitimate Presidential election;
- Spend four years lying that he had lost through massive voter fraud;
- Incite a mob to attack Congress while it counted Electoral College votes—which he knew proved he had lost in 2020.
Trump’s opponents should stop deluding themselves that: “Surely he’ll never do that.”
Whatever they fear he will do, he will do.
Like all predators, he will stop only when he meets a stronger opponent.
Germans—and the rest of the world—learned that about Adolf Hitler. But only when it was too late.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 31, 2024 at 12:14 am
On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Of this he served only nine months before being released.
Hitler used his time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria, to write his infamous book, Mein Kampf–—“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—for a revitalized Germany and the conquest of other nations.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Published in 1925, it was long ignored by all but the most fanatical Nazis. But as Hitler gained increasing numbers of votes in a series of elections, many people—inside and outside Germany—began paying attention to its contents.
By 1939 it had sold 5,200,000 copies and had been translated into 11 languages.
Most of those who bought the book never read it. Its style was bombastic, repetitious and illogical. The first edition contained grammatical errors, reflecting a self-educated man.
Few who read it took Hitler’s intentions seriously. Comedians portrayed him as a wildly gesturing crank who screamed constantly.
Hitler made no effort to hide his program for Germany under his rule. His candor led many people to believe he was a lunatic who could be safely ignored.
He was especially insistent on the need for eliminating world Jewry and conquering the Soviet Union.
On the former topic he wrote: “The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated.
“If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”
A mere 17 years later, Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich” would translate those words into horrific action in a series of extermination camps equipped with gas chambers.
Hitler was equally insistent that Germany needed to find Lebensraum—“Living space”-–in the east. And by “east” he meant “Russia.”
Specifically: “And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago.
“We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
“If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.”
Hitler finally attained power on January 30, 1933. He realized that Germany was not yet strong enough to impose its will on other nations. So he set out on a secret crash program to make Germany the strongest military power in Europe.
In 1936, he set out on his “mission of Providence”:
- March, 1936: Ordering German troops to reoccupy the demilitarised zone between France and Germany (the Rhineland), in violation of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War 1.
- July, 1936: Sending troops to Spain to support the Fascist army of General Francisco Franco.
- March 12, 1938: Occupying Austria and “unifying” it with Germany (the “Anschluss“).
- September 29, 1938: Bullying British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain into surrendering Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland districts to Germany.
- September 1, 1939: Ordering the invasion of Poland, which unintentionally launched World War II.
- June 22, 1941: Ordering the invasion of the Soviet Union.
- 1941: Secretly ordering “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” resulting in the extermination of at least six million Jews.
Only after Hitler set out to conquer, first Europe, then the Soviet Union, did his victims and intended victims realize that Mein Kampf had given them a deadly warning. A warning too many of them had refused to heed.
By the time World War II ended:
- Fifty million men, women and children were died—most of them dying in agony.
- The Soviet Union, having crushed Nazi Germany, become a world power.
- Poland and eastern Europe—once captives of Nazi Germany—now found themselves captives of the Soviet Union.
- The United States, untouched by the war, emerged as the world’s superpower—and the only country strong enough to contain the Soviet Union.
But Adolf Hitler isn’t the only would-be dictator to give ample warning of his murderous intentions.
And, like most Germans in the Weimar Republic, which preceded Nazi Germany, most Americans refuse to take that warning seriously.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 30, 2024 at 12:09 am
In a November 14, 2019 column, “Republicans Can’t Abandon Trump Now Because They’re All Guilty,” freelance journalist Joel Mathis warned: “Trump’s abuses of power mirror those of the GOP as a whole. Republicans can’t turn on him, because doing so would be to indict their party’s entire approach to politics.”
For example:
- At the state level, GOP legislatures have passed numerous voter ID laws over the last decade. Officially, the reason has been to prevent non-citizens from voting. In reality, the motive is to depress turnout among Democratic constituencies.
- When Democrats have won elections, Republicans have tried to block them from carrying out their policies. In Utah, voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box—but Republicans nullified this.
- In North Carolina, Republican legislators prevented voters from choosing their representatives. Instead, Republican representatives chose voters through partisan sorting. In September, 2019, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the legislative gerrymandered district map unconstitutional.
The upshot of all this, wrote Mathis: “The president and his party are united in the belief that their entitlement to power allows them to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes….The president and today’s GOP share the same sins. It will be difficult for them to abandon each other.”
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
In the Electoral College—where Presidential elections are actually decided—Biden won by a margin of 306 to 232 votes for Trump.
Trump refused to accept that verdict. For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, 61 cases were filed by Trump and his allies in state and federal courts—in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia, challenging the election results.
All were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in were unconstitutional.
The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.” Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
Legal scholars almost unanimously agreed the Court’s action quashed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results through the courts.
The Supreme Court
On December 8, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Missouri United States Senator Roy Blunt joined House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in blocking a resolution asserting that Biden is the President-elect of the United States.
Still, Trump pressed on. On December 9, he asked the Supreme Court to block millions of Biden votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The request came in a filing with the court in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The Court refused.
* * * * *
The United States has indeed become a polarized country. But it’s not the polarization between Republicans and Democrats, or between conservatives and liberals.
It’s the polarization between Right-wing fanatics intent on enslaving everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their Fascistic beliefs and agenda—and those who resist being enslaved.
Those who hoped that Republicans would choose patriotism over partisanship got their answer on February 5. That was when the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles.
It’s natural to regret that the United States has become a sharply divided nation. CNN has taken the lead in hand-wringing with a weepy-voiced PSA:
“Our trust has been broken—in our leaders, in our institutions and even some of our friends. And we are hurting, Now more than ever we need each other to listen, to learn from one another, and to rebuild those bonds. Because trust shows we believe in the good in each other. It’s what makes us human. And when we can trust one another, that is when we can truly achieve great things.”
But those who insist on the truth should realize there is only one choice:
Either non-Fascist Americans will destroy the Republican party and its voters that threaten to enslave them—or they will be enslaved by Republicans and their voters who believe they are entitled to manipulate and destroy the country’s democratic processes.
There is no middle ground.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 29, 2024 at 12:13 am
On November 14, 2019, the CNN website showcased an opinion piece by Jane Carr and Laura Juncadella entitled: “Fractured States of America.”
And it opened:
“Some worry that it’s already too late, that we’ve crossed a threshold of polarization from which there is no return. Others look toward a future where more moderate voices are heeded and heard, and Americans can find better ways to relate to each other.
“Still others look back to history for a guide—perhaps for what not to do, or at the very least for proof that while it’s been bad before, progress is still possible.”
Then followed a series of anecdotes. The sub-headlines summed up many of the comments reported.
- “I was starting to hate people that I have loved for years.”
- “Voting for Trump cost me my friends.”
- “I feel like I’m living in hostile territory.”
- “Our children are watching this bloodsport.”
- “A student’s Nazi-style salute reflects the mate.”
- “Our leaders reflect the worst of us.”
- “I truly believe I will be assaulted over a bumper sticker.”
- “It already feels like a cold war.”
Abraham Lincoln warned: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half-slave and half-free. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
America now faces such a choice:
- To submit to the tyrannical aggression of a ruthless political party convinced that they are entitled to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes; or
- To fiercely resist that aggression and the destruction of those democratic processes.
Consider the face-off between President Donald J. Trump and Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
Vindman is a United States Army officer who served as the Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council. He was also a witness to Trump’s efforts to extort “a favor” from the president of Ukraine.
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman
Адміністрація Президента України [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)%5D
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who has had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman, who had heard Trump’s phone call, testified before the House Intelligence Committee. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. Government’s support of Ukraine.
“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.”
Trump denounced Vindman as a “Never Trumper”—as if opposing his extortion attempt constituted a blasphemy. Republicans and their shills on the Fox News Network attacked him as well.
As a result, he sought physical protection by the Army for himself and his family.
(On February 7, 2020, he was reassigned from the National Security Council at Trump’s order.)
Donald Trump
* * * * *
On November 25, 2019, CNN political correspondent Jake Tapper interviewed Representative Adam Schiff on the coming impeachment trial.
What would it mean if Republicans uniformly oppose any articles of impeachment against Trump? asked Tapper.
“It will have very long-term consequences, if that’s where we end up,” replied Schiff.
“And if not today, I think Republican members in the future, to their children and their grandchildren, will have to explain why they did nothing in the face of this deeply unethical man who did such damage to the country.”
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims.”
Like Hitler, Trump offered his Republican voters and Congressional allies intoxicating dreams: “I will enrich all of you. And I will humiliate and destroy those Americans you most hate.”
For his white, Fascistic, largely elderly audience, those enemies included blacks, atheists, Hispanics, non-Christians, Muslims, liberals, “uppity” women, Asians.
And, again like Hitler, his audience had always possessed these dreams. Trump offered them nothing new. As a lifelong hater, he undoubtedly shared their dreams. But as a lifelong opportunist, he realized that he could use them to catapult himself into a position of supreme power.
He despised his followers—both as voters and Congressional allies—for they were merely the instruments of his will.
For Trump’s supporters in the House and Senate, fear remains their overwhelming motivation. They fear that if they cross him—or simply don’t praise him enough—he will sic his fanatical base on them. And then they will lose their cozy positions—and the power and perks that go with them.
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In History, Politics, Social commentary on October 23, 2024 at 12:59 am
On November 13, 2012, Dave, a conservative friend of mine who reads my blog, sent this email to a friend:
Warren,
This is the propaganda blog editor friend of mine in San Francisco that I talked about during my presentation last Thursday evening at the Opera House.
As you can see, he is a typical unbiased uournalist…. As I said, I love the guy dearly and truly have the utmost respect for his ability and intellect (although it’s sometimes pointed). Nonetheless, I thought you and others would get a kick out of this blog.I would suggest that you log onto his site and read some of his other postings. You will then see why I am such an admirer….
* * * * *
Thus, here is my philosophy as a blogger for those of you who read my blog.
Many years ago I worked as an investigative reporter, covering local police and courts for a small Utah newspaper
As a reporter, I adhered strictly to a policy of objectivity: Reporting only what I knew to be true. And in crime-related stories, reporting only what I knew I could legally prove to be true.
For example: You might feel absolutely certain that So-and-So committed a crime. But to avoid libel suits, you had better have the proof in legal documents. And if you can find sources who are willing to back up those legal documents, so much the better.
Another thing: As a straight journalist, you have no right to inject your opinion into anything you write.
So if you write a story about a mayor or councilman you know is corrupt, you don’t have the right to add: “This guy needs to be tossed out of office and indicted.”
If a prosecutor says that, quote him. But your opinion doesn’t matter.
As a blogger I editorialize by pointing out what these facts mean (at least to me) and offering, when possible, a proposed solution to problems.
Take my column about Right-wing columnist Ann Coulter.
On November 13, 2012, I posted a column entitled, “Tears for the Miss America Nazi.”
Coulter had been outraged that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had not deprived Barack Obama of a second term as President.
First, I laid out her recent, public weeping over the re-election of President Obama. Then I quoted comedian Bill Maher and political commentator Chris Matthews on their reactions to Coulter’s comment that “There is no hope.”
Ann Coulter
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
So far, I had adhered to journalistic principles of fairness and objectivity—the who, what, when, where, how and why of journalism.
Only in the last six paragraphs of my column did I venture an opinion.
First, I laid out the historical precedent for what I intended to recommend. When her Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide, Magda Goebbels murdered her six children. Then she and her husband, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, killed themselves.
Magda and Joseph Goebbels and their children
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-086-03 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Then I offered the depressed Coulter an option she might not have considered: She could follow the example of Magda (minus the husband and children that Magda had and Coulter lacked).
Not that I expected her to do so.
Frankly, I didn’t consider Ann Coulter a legitimate journalist. She and Rush Limbaugh were the ultimate propaganda icons for the Republican party. They made a career out of attacking the integrity and patriotism of anyone who dared to disagree with them.
For example: Take Coulter’s book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.
One of her heroes is Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who unleashed a wave of hysteria across America with his slanderous accusations of massive Communist infiltration of the Federal Government.
Joseph McCarthy
Coulter maintains that McCarthy was a true patriot, and that he—not his victims—was the true victim of history.
This is on a par with rewriting history as the son of Laventi Beria, Joseph Stalin’s infamous secret police chief, has attempted. He insists that his father was a good man who was forced by Stalin to do bad things.
Jesus was right: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” I hugely admire those who seek out the truth and speak it forcefully, without fear or favor.
And I despise those who ride to fame, power or wealth on a carpet of lies and evasions. Although I have written heavily about the infamies of the Right, I realize there is plenty of stupidity, arrogance and criminality on the Left.
I don’t believe that any person, agency, political party or corporation has a monopoly on virtue, intelligence or judgment. On the contrary: Members of agencies, political parties and corporations should be held to the highest level of scrutiny. This is especially true when those institutions hold vast power over the lives of ordinary citizens.
Throughout the last half-century Republicans have dominated American politics—and the lives of Americans. Thus I have written far more about their all-consuming lust for absolute power than I have on the usually secondary role played by Democrats.
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In History, Politics, Social commentary on October 22, 2024 at 12:49 am
History seems to have repeated itself.
On October 12, hundreds of Donald Trump followers were left stranded in the California desert after a rally in the Coachella Valley.
Despite the intense heat that soared to over 100 degrees, thousands of passionate Trump supporters braved the elements to hear the former President speak. During the rally, some supporters reportedly collapsed because of the stifling heat.
Prior to the event, buses were provided to transport supporters to the rally location. Trump loves to brag about the size of his rallies, so no effort was spared to bus them into Calhoun Ranch, which was situated about five miles from where they had parked their vehicles.
He spoke for almost 90 minutes, then left the stage at about 7 p.m.
Donald Trump
That was when chaos erupted.
Instead of being shuttled away from the venue, many Stormtrumpers were left stranded in 93 degree heat. No buses showed up to return them to their cars, which were miles away. This left many attendees scrambling to find their way home.
“Apparently the buses are no longer coming,” one Stormtrumper posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, more than three hours after the rally.
“There used to be like 20 buses when we were being brought here, but now there’s only like three buses operating. It’s just chaos, absolute chaos. All of us are stranded here, everyone is stranded here.”
Two hours after the rally, another Stormtrumper railed on X: “Parking lot is a two-hour walk. Countless elderly stranded here and can’t walk anymore. No restroom facilities accessible anymore. Something nefarious went down tonight to spark a riot.”
He claimed that a bus driver had told attendees that “ALL of the fuel stations for BUSES (not cars) were completely depleted,” which meant some of the bus drivers were stranded without gas.
“There were apparently 60 buses employed for this event,” he added, “and the fuel reserves were completely depleted or never refilled before the event. Smells like sabotage!”
A Trump campaign bus
In fact, the only villain at work lay in Trump’s complete indifference to his supporters after they filled seats for TV cameras at the rally.
“Thousands of people were stranded after the Trump rally in Coachella on Saturday night. The Trump campaign provided buses to bring people to the rally but no busses showed up to take them back to their cars,” Republicans Against Trump posted. “Trump doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
A similar “Screw your followers” event had occurred almost 12 years earlier, on November 6, 2012.
President Barack Obama soundly defeated Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney and won a second term in the White House.
Then—according to NBC reporter Garrett Haake:
“From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.
“Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.”
The Romney campaign—having no more use for its loyal staffers—had given them the heave-ho.
More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient historian, Plutarch, in his biography of Alexander the Great, made this timeless observation about human character: “And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.
“Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”
Clearly, sometime before Election Night, arrangements had been made to cancel those credit cards. And why not? Whether he entered the White House or returned home, those who had sacrificed so much of their time and energy would now be completely useless to Romney.
Romney was not only rich (with an estimated fortune of at least $250 million) he had made it clear that the rich were the only group he truly cared about. This was, after all, the candidate who made statements like:
- “I have friends who are owners of NASCAR Teams.”
- “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs.”
- “Corporations are people, my friend.”
- “Forty-seven percent are dependent upon government.”
- “I like being able to fire people.”
So when the curtain finally dropped on Romney’s six-year quest to become Plutocrat-in-Chief, there was no reason for him to do anything but exit quickly and let his loyal followers fend for themselves.
In giving his concession speech, Romney paid tribute to those who had sacrificed so much on his behalf:
“To the team across the country—the volunteers, the fundraisers, the donors, the surrogates—I don’t believe that there’s ever been an effort in our party that can compare with what you have done over these past years. Thank you so very much.”
For Mitt Romney it was Exit, Stage Right (there is no Stage Left for a Right-wing Republican) and time to let his followers fend for themselves.
Twelve years later, Donald Trump would reach the same conclusion.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 21, 2024 at 12:10 am
After being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, Meryl Streep criticized Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s mocking of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.
Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.
At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from an article he had written four years earlier.
Trump had earlier said the article proved that New Jersey Muslims had celebrated the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Kovaleski had insisted there was no credible proof of such celebrations.
Angered at being contradicted, Trump mocked Kovaleski: He flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”
Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right
At the Golden Globe Awards on January 8, Streep denounced this behavior that “broke my heart.”
“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
Streep’s words outraged Trump’s supporters—especially his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway.
Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.
“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”
Conway didn’t say what common ground Streep should find with Trump. Perhaps agreeing on mocking the disabled?
Kelleyanne Conway
Then Conway visited CNN’s “New Day,” where she offered a “black-is-white” defense for Trump’s videotaped ridiculing of Kovaleski: It didn’t happen.
The host, Chris Cuomo, having seen the video, wasn’t buying it.
CUOMO: But is [Streep] wrong? Is she wrong that it was wrong for Trump to make gestures like that about a man with disabilities?
CONWAY: He didn’t—but that is not what he did and he has said that a thousand times. As he tweeted out today—
CUOMO: He can say it a million. Look at the video.
CONWAY: Why can’t you—wait, excuse me. Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt the way the benefit of the doubt was given to CNN’s polling, all of its analysts?
CUOMO: Because he’s making a disgusting gesture on video talking about Serge.
CONWAY: Not about that reporter and that’s just a fact. That is what he’s said. You should give him—
CUOMO: But how is it not about the reporter?
CONWAY: —the deference and respect if he says that it was—he was not mocking, he was mocking the groveling. He said it again this morning. He has three tweets out about it.
CUOMO: But he’s doing a gesture that goes right to the guy’s vulnerability.
CONWAY: You’re saying you don’t believe him. You’re calling him a liar and you shouldn’t.
CUOMO: Look, Kellyanne, to me that’s like you’re trying to scare me off the point and we both know it’s a waste of time.
CONWAY: I’m not going to scare you off anything.
CUOMO: He’s making a gesture that is so keenly tuned to what Serge’s vulnerability is.
CONWAY: And now you’re giving oxygen to what Meryl Streep said.
CUOMO: Forget about Meryl Streep. This happened before her. If our kids did that, could you imagine what we would say to them?
Conway said she would not bring her children into the discussion.
CUOMO: I will. If my kid did something like that, it’d be a really tough day.
CONWAY: You have to listen to what the president has said about that. Why don’t you believe him?
Conway tried to change the subject to Hillary Clinton: “She was given the benefit of the doubt here constantly.”
When Cuomo asked for specifics, she refused to give them. Then she returned to claiming that Trump had never mocked Kovaleski:
CONWAY: You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this, when he’s telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth, rather than look at what’s in his heart.
* * * * *
Previously, politicians had defended themselves with arguments like: “You can see right here on the tape, I did (or, I didn’t)….”
Trump has cast aside that logic—and the taped evidence—by demanding: “Believe what I’m telling you, not what you’ve just seen.”
By that rationale, if a security camera shows Trump robbing a bank at gunpoint, we’re supposed to believe him if he says: “No, I didn’t rob that bank. I was simply checking my bank balance.”
Such “logic” holds appeal for paid shills like Kelleyanne Conway. But most people will continue to judge by the evidence.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 18, 2024 at 12:22 am
For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that Barack Obama was born in Kenya—and was therefore an illegitimate President.
For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so.
As his popularity fell to less than 1% among blacks, the managers of his campaign urged: Put the “birther” issue behind you.
So, on September 16, 2016—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.
Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words—after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:
“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement–and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.
On the evening of September 16, Hillary Clinton strongly responded to Trump’s comments:
“For five years, he has led the birther movement to de-legitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”
And First Lady Michelle Obama slammed Trump for his “birther” claims:
“Then, of course, there were those who questioned, and who continue to question for the past eight years, and up to this very day, whether my husband was even born in this country.
“Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the examples he set, by going high when they go low. And he’s answered these questions with the progress we’ve achieved together.”
Michelle Obama
But perhaps the best perspective on this event was provided by syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Each Friday they appear on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
On September 16, 2016, Shields (a liberal) and Brooks (a conservative) addressed Trump’s about-face on birtherism.
MARK SHIELDS: “I think it’s important to establish right at the outset that [Trump] wasn’t only the loudest and the highest-profile and the most persistent and the most well-publicized birther, he, Donald Trump. He lied. He lied consistently and persistently.
“And, today, without explanation or excuse, he just changed his position and tried to absolutely falsely shift the blame onto Hillary Clinton.
“And this was an appeal to—he debased democracy. He debased the national debate. He appealed to that which is most ignoble or least noble in all of us.”
DAVID BROOKS: “Usually, there’s some tangential relationship to the truth, but a corroding relationship to the truth, frankly, as politics has gone on over the years.
“But now we’re in a reverse, Orwellian inversion of the truth with this. And so we have a team of staffers and then the candidate himself who have taken the normal spin and smashed all the rules.
“And so we are really in Orwell land. We are in 1984. And it’s interesting that an authoritarian personality type comes in at the same time with a complete disrespect for even tangential relationship to the truth that words are unmoored.
“And so I do think this statement sort of shocked me with the purification of a lot of terrible trends that have been happening. And so what’s white is black, and what is up is down, what is down is up. And that really is something new in politics.
“And the fact that there is no penalty for it, apparently—he’s doing fantastic in the last two weeks in the polls–is just somehow where we have gotten.”
Less than two months later, Trump won the Presidency.
Since then, Trump has continued to inhabit what David Brooks called “Orwell land.”
The most recent example of this occurred on January 9, 2017.
The night before, Meryl Streep had enraged Trump and his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway, at the Golden Globes Awards ceremony.
While being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, she had criticized Trump’s mocking, on November 25, 2015, of disabled New York Times reporter Serve Kovaleski:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 17, 2024 at 12:12 am
In 2011, Donald Trump, host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against Barack Obama.
Seeking to gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya—and was not an American citizen.
His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Donald Trump
Among the statements Trump made:
February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”
March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate. … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”
March 28, 2011: “I am really concerned” [that Obama wasn’t born in the United States]. He said that the birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaii newspaper could have been planted “for whatever reason.”
March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. … He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”
April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”
April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”
On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawiian birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.
“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”
And on May 1, he announced the solving of one of those “big problems”: Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had been tracked down and shot dead by elite U.S. Navy SEALS in Pakistan.
SEALS attacking bin Laden’s compound in the 2012 movie, “Zero Dark Thirty”
And how did Trump respond? With the following series of Tweets on Twitter:
May 18, 2012: “Let’s take a closer look at that birth certificate.@BarackObama was described in 2003 as being “born in Kenya.” http://bit.ly/Klc9Uu
August 6, 2012: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.”
August 27, 2012: “Why do the Republicans keep apologizing on the so called “birther” issue? No more apologies—take the offensive!”
September 13, 2012: “Wake Up America! See article: “Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake”
June 30, 2013: “@davidrhythmguit: @realDonaldTrump @Chuffman48 Mark Cuban accepts the fact that the President of the United States was born here. Doubt it”
August 22, 2013: “Why are people upset w/ me over Pres Obama’s birth certificate? I got him to release it, or whatever it was, when nobody else could!”
December 12, 2013: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived”
November 23, 2014: “@futureicon: @pinksugar61 Obama also fabricated his own birth certificate after being pressured to produce one by @realDonaldTrump“
Even after declaring his candidacy for President on June 16, 2015, Trump continued to insist that Barack Obama was an illegitimate President.
Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity among blacks had steadily fallen. In June, 2016, a Quinnipiac poll revealed that Trump had 1% of support from black voters. By comparison, 91% of black voters backed Hillary Clinton.
Among the reasons for this:
- His enthusiastic support by racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
- His “birther” attacks on President Obama as a non-citizen from Kenya—and thus ineligible to hold the Presidency.
- His attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and calling on his supporters at rallies to rough up minority protesters.
Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.
And so, on September 16—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.
In doing so, he entered into what conservative New York Times political columnist David Brooks called “Orwell land.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 16, 2024 at 12:26 am
“Credibility gap” is a term that came into use during the mid-1960s to describe public and journalistic distrust of President Lyndon B. Johnson. In particular, the term was applied to his administration’s conduct of the Vietnam war.
It was, in short, a euphemism for accusing government officials of outright lying.
An example of the credibility gap in full swing appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1987 Vietnam war movie, Full Metal Jacket.
Vietnam was a war where military and political officials spewed a gung-ho version of constant American progress against a tough enemy.
And where civilian reporters like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite saw—and labeled—the war as a brutal, wasteful and ultimately doomed effort.
Midway through the film, there’s an editorial meeting of The Sea Tiger, the official Marine newspaper.
Lieutenant Lockhart is presiding–and he is determined to give his superiors an endless stream of “all-systems-go” propaganda reports. He reads a series of stories that have been published:
Story #1: DIPLOMATS IN DUNGAREES—MARINE ENGINEERS LEND A HELPING HAND REBUILDING DONG PHUC VILLAGES.
LOCKHART: “Chili, “if we move Vietnamese, they are evacuees. If they come to us to be evacuated, they are refugees.”
Story #2: N.V.A. SOLDIER DESERTS AFTER READING PAMPHLETS.
LOCKHART: “A young North Vietnamese Army regular, who realized his side could not win the war, deserted from his unit after reading Open Arms program pamphlets.”
Story #3: NOT WHILE WE’RE EATING: N.V.A. LEARN MARINES ON A SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSION DON’T LIKE TO BE INTERRUPTED WHILE EATING CHOW.
LOCKHART: “‘Search and destroy.’ Uh, we have a new directive on this. In the future, in place of ‘search and destroy,’ substitute the phrase ‘sweep and clear.’ Got it?”
Lt. Lockhart, editor of The Sea Tiger
LOCKHART: “And, Joker—where’s the weenie?”
JOKER: “Sir?”
LOCKHART “The Kill, Joker. I mean, all that fire, the grunts must’ve hit something.”
JOKER: “Didn’t see ’em.”
LOCKHART: “Joker, I’ve told you, we run two basic stories here: Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants—winning of hearts and Minds—okay? And combat action that results in a kill—Winning the War. Now you must have seen blood trails … drag marks?”
JOKER: “It was raining, sir.”
LOCKHART: “Well, that’s why God passed the law of probability. Now rewrite it and give it a happy ending–say, uh, one kill. Make it a sapper or an officer. Grunts like reading about dead officers.”
JOKER: “Okay, an officer. How about a general?”
LOCKHART: “Joker, maybe you’d like our guys to read the paper and feel bad. I mean, in case you didn’t know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.”
So great became the divide between truth and lies during military “press briefings” that reporters started calling them “The Five O’clock Follies.” And even some soldiers took to wearing buttons that said: “Ambushed at Credibility Gap.”
Reporters who dared to write truthfully about the military’s crimes and failures—like David Halberstam of the New York Times and Peter Arnett of the Associated Press—were regarded as traitors by military and political officials.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy became enraged by Halberstam’s reporting on the corruption of the South Vietnamese government. He pressured New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to transfer Halberstam to another locale. Sulzberger politely refused—and then, to send a message to Kennedy, extended Halberstam’s stay in Vietnam another six months.
David Halberstam
In 1965, when CBS Correspondent Morley Safer filmed Marines setting fire to the village of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters, President Lyndon B. Johnson was similarly outraged.
He placed an early-morning call to CBS News President Frank Stanton and shouted: “Your boys shat on the American flag!”
The trail of deceit and attempted censorship continued right up to the end of the war—in April, 1975. That was when North Vietnamese forces invaded the South and quickly overwhelmed the incompetent defenses arrayed against them.
And while America was still bogged down in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal erupted on June 17, 1972.
Watergate Hotel
Members of the Nixon administration’s secret “Plumbers Unit” burglarized the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel.
Obsessed with re-electing Richard Nixon, they sought incriminating information to discredit U.S. Senator George McGovern, the Democrats’ nominee for President.
When the burglars were caught, President Richard M. Nixon and his topmost officials lied and stonewalled both reporters and investigators seeking the truth.
Nixon’s press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, repeatedly slandered the integrity of The Washington Post for its coverage of the mushrooming Watergate scandal. He called the Watergate break-in “a third-rate burglary” and attacked the Post for “shabby journalism.”
Finally, on April 17, 1973, Ziegler, announced at a press conference: “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”
In short: We’ve been lying to you for the last 10 months. But now we’re telling the truth.
Like Vietnam, the Watergate scandal destroyed the reputations of many of its chief architects. Forty government officials were indicted or jailed.
Vietnam and Watergate were seminal events for Americans coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They taught an entire generation: Don’t trust the government. Its officials routinely lie, and their lies can be deadly.
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DONALD TRUMP: THE MIND OF A PSYCHOPATH COMES TO VIDEO: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 1, 2024 at 12:09 amAfter taking office as President on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump continued to hurl threats of violence against those he hates.
“Trump’s language of violence started with immigrants when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015,” wrote Washington Post Reporter Eugene Scott. “There is a direct line from his language to real violence against immigrants and other innocent Americans caught in the maniacal mass shootings of the past year.
“And this cancer is spreading: to Congress, to the media, to the intelligence community, to foreign allies. There is no end in sight as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged and the GOP remains frozen in abject silence.”
On October 2, 2019, Journalist Nina Burleigh wrote: “Since 2015, TV-watching Americans have been subject to the deimatic spectacle of more than 400 rallies (at least 80 since his election) in which Trump sometimes openly and more often coyly urged supporters to violence. These spectacles have conditioned many Americans to fear him and his more enthusiastic supporters.”
Supporters giving the “Seig Heil” salute to Donald Trump
“Over the last few days, the President’s rhetoric of violence and hate has spread,” stated an October 3, 2019 press release by America’s Voice, a liberal immigration group.
“As Jamelle Bouie noted yesterday, ‘Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of ‘treason,’ promised ‘Big Consequences’ for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment ‘will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.’”
Trump’s opponents have good reason to fear. And not simply the public demonstrations by the President’s fanatical base. They should fear the secret fantasies of the Right.
Those secret fantasies have been revealed in a series of Right-wing videos featuring graphic acts of violence against those whom the Right—and Trump—hate.
From October 10 to 12, 2019, attendees of the American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort enjoyed many of those videos.
One of these, “The Trumpsman,” featured a digitized Trump shooting, stabbing and setting fire to such liberals—and even conservatives—as:
And legitimate news media—such as CBS, BBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were also depicted as among Trump’s victims.
The video was produced by Rightists who believed it reflected what Donald Trump would do to his enemies if only he could get away with it. And given his near-constant calls for violence against his critics, they were absolutely correct.
But the video’s critics were wrong to call for its suppression.
On the contrary—it should have bene widely seen for what it was: The Mein Kampf of Donald Trump and his fanatical followers, in and outside the Republican party.
Like Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, it depicted the future America can expect if the Right gains the power to live out its murderous fantasies. And the fantasy Right-wingers prize most: The brutal extermination of everyone who refuses to submit to their Fascistic tyranny.
“The Trumpsman” is part of a growing genre of pro-Trump memes that routinely earn thousands of views on sites like YouTube and Twitter. Many superimpose the faces of Trump and his chief supporters slaughtering Democrats, liberal celebrities and/or members of the media.
The event’s organizer, Alex Phillips, hurriedly claimed that the “unauthorized video” was shown “in a side room” at the American Priority Conference.
But there was an upside to this exercise in Right-wing porn. Democrats could have run TV ads showing limited clips from “The Trumpsman” video.
Unfortunately, the majority of Democrats lack the courage to attack their Right-wing enemies with the same ruthlessness used against them. That’s why they lost most Presidential elections of the 20th century.
Americans should be constantly warned: These videos were not made by liberals to parody the values and goals of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
These videos were made by Right-wingers—and reflect the true values and intentions of the Republican party and its Right-wing supporters.
The boiler-plate rhetoric that gushes out of Republican conventions—about love of family, God and flag—is the public mask of the Right.
The videos that depict Right-wingers ruthlessly slaughtering anyone who dares to disagree with them reflect the real face of the Right.
Of course, most Americans never imagined that a President would:
Trump’s opponents should stop deluding themselves that: “Surely he’ll never do that.”
Whatever they fear he will do, he will do.
Like all predators, he will stop only when he meets a stronger opponent.
Germans—and the rest of the world—learned that about Adolf Hitler. But only when it was too late.
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